Eat, Pray, Love

The book is a year long self discovery of Gilbert’s. She finds herself at 31 living the life people dream of. Married for years, doing the suburban/city thing, and getting ready for the next step, a baby. She is semi-depressed realizing that this life that she is supposed to have, isn’t the life that she wants for herself. She is miserable.

She goes through a nasty divorce which she starts, picks herself up and decides to takes a year to regroup and find herself. 4 months in Italy (Rome), 4 months in India (an ashram) and 4 months in Bali (Indonesia). An interesting journey.

What drew me into the book is her writing. My guess is Gilbert writes exactly like she talks. Clever, witty and insightful. Even while meditating she writes about other things she is thinking about which made me laugh out loud. Reading her is like chatting with your best friend.

Rome was an eating extravaganza, India was about praying and Indonesia was about finding love and herself again after coming full circle.

Besides the fact that Gilbert draws you along on her journeys, the book made me think about expectations. Here is a woman who supposedly came from a nice upper middle class and was doing everything that was presumed she would do. Get a career, marry young, get a nice house and then have a family. But for Gilbert the thought of living that life was like being trapped. She wanted to bust out, travel, explore, meet people, have a completely different kind of life. And why shouldn’t she? Why shouldn’t anybody. She instinctively knew what was going to make her happy through self discovery.

I am thrilled with the life I chose and the path that has led to me to where I am but after reading Gilbert, I just wanted to applaud her. She figured it out on her own terms and that is the perfect reason to pick up this book. Also, reading about her eating her way through Rome is quite appealing.